Yep, PP here and I agree. Why would I regret not being stupid? I can honestly say I'll never wistfully think "Why didn't I try cocaine?" |
I think you are my twin! I had a wonderful high school and college experience. Went to a large party school and was always out with friends but never had any pressure to drink or do drugs. It wasn't my thing and no one made it a big deal. Dated and wound up marrying a guy I met jr. year and yes, we waited for marriage too. There are ways! Still friends with all those people and so happy to have had the experience I did.
I think the key is the friends. If you have good friends who support your choices, life can be great. |
Not the PP to whom you're responding, but it's super obvious that your response to the PP's non-judgmental post was influenced by your own insecurity. |
| I don't think you are going to get the advice you are looking for asking the generations that read this website. The generations now in college and younger are far more promiscuous when it comes to sex than we ever were. As a parent, you just have to kind of accept the fact that it's going to happen, and happen outside of long-term relationships. Look at the the movies and tv they have grown up with. |
I was the first and only person in my family to go to college, so I was terrified of screwing it up. Would drink to excess maybe once or twice per year, no sex until I was 24, and I only smoked pot once or twice my senior year for the lamest reason imaginable: I had a dear friend who had become seriously addicted to drugs, and only trusted other people who used. So I would light up with him, and then, stoned out of my mind, I'd try to persuade him to go to rehab! I was a very earnest child. But I still had a wonderful time in college, with all the traditional big ups (freedom! intellectual discovery! sleeping in late on weekday mornings!) and big downs (gorgeous first love that nonetheless ended disastrously) that didn't require me to be drunk or stoned to enjoy them (or suffer through them, as applicable). I'm glad I saved my big rebellion years for grad school, as a PP noted. I was better equipped to handle them in my mid-20s than I was at 18.
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Do you really think so? I am 30, so far removed from college, but not far enough to have a college-aged kid. I have college-aged cousins, though, and they are not sex fiends, though they do drink to what I would consider excess. As with some others on this thread, I did not do anything crazy in college, nor do I regret it. It's just not my personality -- I am fairly quiet and controlled. At work I am known for being the calm one, and I can count on one hand the number of heated or angry arguments I've had as an adult. I've never been drunk nor desired to be, never done drugs, did not have sex until I was engaged at 27. Not for religious reasons, but because I just wasn't comfortable being intimate in a lesser relationship. I don't regret any of these things. I am also not "proud" of them in the sense that I think it's the only way to go -- obviously most people do get drunk, have sex etc much earlier, and that is fine for them. It would not have been fine for me, however. I do not like to lose control and I don't ever want to be unaware of what's happening to me. Early on in college, I saw a couple of girls get so drunk they didn't know what they were doing and would gotten into some serious trouble with multiple guys at a frat party had I and a few other friends not forcibly taken them home. I swore then that I would never let that happen to me. That's not to say I haven't done foolish things - I have, mostly related to daredevil physical stunts that I look back on now and think, what the hell was I doing .... but come to think of it that was after college, in the 22-24 bracket, when I was traveling on my own. |
| Being an athlete means nothing. I ran track at a D1 school, drank excessively nightly and still kicked ass on the track. It's all up to the girl. |